I was up early this morning (happens when you go to bed early) and decided to clear my head for next week’s sojourn at Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop. After breakfast, I took a cup of Tazo Zen green tea and a book of short stories to the front porch and plopped myself in one of the Adirondack chairs, making sure my new planting from this week was in sight.

It must be the Druid in me who gets sad when a tree dies, and though I wasn’t particularly fond of the arbor vitae’s aesthetics, I hated the fact that, after surviving an infestation of bag worms last year and appearing so healthy and green in early spring, it began to die from the top down. Then, I looked upon it as an opportunity to replace more of what the house’s builder considered landscaping with something I liked.

Shot from my comfy chair on the front porch.

So, on Thursday, Tech Duncan welcomed this newcomer: a lovely little Japanese maple under which the Buddha can contemplate for eternity. This morning I sat so this was in view as I drank tea and read, my only company some birds and the occasional bee. I became calmer than I had been all week and engrossed in studying how the light breeze stirred the maple and how the sun lit it.

And the writer in me shifted from my comfort zone–prose–into something poetic. I thought the new tree needed a haiku to honor its place at Tech Duncan. Believe me, a haiku is definitely preferable to what my Irish grandmother did for her African violets–pricking a finger and feeding them her blood. Since I don’t have a poet in residence, that composition was up to, gulp, me.

Now, I’m not a poet, something that I need to change one day, but the tree, the light, the breeze evoked this (All my poet friends, just quietly snicker behind your hands; no guffawing, please.):

Maple trembles from
Sun’s lustful touch; leaves quiver
From satiation.